


To The Terrorist That I Love

by capncrystal



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Gen, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-08
Updated: 2015-12-08
Packaged: 2018-05-05 14:45:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5378981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/capncrystal/pseuds/capncrystal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A civilian recognized Duo Maxwell from the news and must decide whether or not to report him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To The Terrorist That I Love

**Author's Note:**

> Written circa 2010? This was one of the first fics I ever posted on LJ, way back in the day. Inspired by late night musings at work in the middle of a GW rewatch.

I’m not special, you know. I’m just a regular girl- a young woman, I guess, but the truth is, I think I stopped maturing years ago. I think someone is somehow going to see me and see _through_ me one day, and take all my responsibilities away and send me to my room without any dinner for daring to pretend to be an adult. It will never happen, of course. This is war, and we have a war economy, which means there are jobs to do and in some of the places that have been hit, nobody looks too close at a pair of able hands. Everyone works to rebuild, a community coming together and reshaping itself after disaster. Sometimes I wish I was in a place like that.  
  
See, I’m nobody special. I’m just a young woman, soft and weak and useless. I’m a daytime employee at a bakery. We feed the workmen, the average joes who are building around the block, the ones who walk the empty scaffolding like ants picking clean the bones of some majestic beast. I watch them, sometimes, on my way home from work. But of course, I can’t linger- there’s a curfew. Sometimes women come in before lunch and have coffee and a bun, housewives out on their errands or mothers getting a brief respite from their crying kids. We used to get some young men, college-age boys- now we get soldiers, and the soldiers never pay.  
  
Don’t look them in the eye. Don’t speak to them, except to thank them for stopping by the shop. Be polite. Be cheerful. Stay behind the counter. No matter what they want, give it to them. This is the life we live, where soldiers take all we have. Some of them pay, if they’re alone. If they’re with their buddies, they never do- they laugh, they take what they want, and god help us if we get an order wrong. These are our saviors, after all- they deserve our respect.

Last week, our saviors destroyed the produce stand on the corner. This cheerful old man- I can’t remember his name- had a nice big garden. He grew his own everything, squashes the size of melons and strawberries so sweet you could cry when you bit into one. He gave me one, once. I should remember his name. The soldiers kicked it over and stamped all over everything last week, and stamped all over him, too. He had to clean it all up himself, no one would dare to help him. Last week, there was another bombing, two towns over. Business was bad all over today- but you showed up, the next day, and somehow, the rest of us pulled through.  
  
Last month, I saw your face on the news and it struck me how handsome you were- for a terrorist. I only caught a flash, a mugshot on the news, but it was so interesting. I wanted to see if it was only a moment of insanity, so I looked up more images- anything available on the terrorists that plague our fair nation. Let me just say, honey, there was nothing temporary about that insanity- death is beautiful. You’re a killer, ten thousand times worse than the most brutal and stupid soldier. You’re the _enemy_. You paid for your coffee and smiled and I thought, there is no way this man is a terrorist. Simply no way. Yet, you have his face- the man on the news, one of the group that keeps our town in terror, one of the factions that killed my cousin in that explosion- he was a pilot, until he died. I wonder if it was you who killed him. Why are you so handsome?! I must be wrong. I know I’m right, but I _have_ to be wrong. You ordered your coffee- black as midnight, sweet as sin, with a shit eating smile and a wink that made me faint and dizzy for a minute. You wear all black, but you’re not the only one in mourning here- half the people in this town have lost someone, and I think I’m mourning my morals.  
  
When I went home that night I looked it up again, just to be sure, and of course, I was right. Your mugshot is burned into my retinas, but your mugshot isn’t smiling, and it didn’t pay for coffee. The soldiers never pay for coffee unless they’re alone. All the regular civilians do- and you came in like a civilian, all in black with that stupid hat, hiding your face and your hair but doing nothing to hide that smile. Your face is the face of an angel, and the data next to your face calls you a murderer. You might have killed my cousin. But aren’t all faces pretty much the same, if you think about it? There’s a nose, right in the center of faces. There are two eyes, essentially symmetrical, with varying shapes of the eyelids and colors of the irises themselves. We all have mouths, for sipping sweet black coffee, for grinning at the girl behind the counter who doesn’t even dare to blush. We all have minds, to think and plan and come up with logical excuses for the things we simply cannot believe. We all have souls, to kill people’s cousins or drop bombs on military bases or let him walk away without sounding the alarm that will call in the saviors and alert them- here! Here is a terrorist! Here is a villain, come to get a cup of joe just like everyone else in town.  
  
I let you go, that first day, telling myself I must be wrong. As you left, I wondered what would happen if I did call the soldiers- and turned out to be wrong? How embarrassing when you run up to an old friend and hug them tightly, only to realize you’re holding a stranger in your arms. How fatal, when you call soldiers to arrest a paying customer, and it turns out he’s innocent- he doesn’t even resemble that mugshot, not slightly, what were you _thinking_? And then suspicion will fall on me, as they wonder why I would want to turn in an innocent man- what am I hiding? Or am I only trying to curry favor with the saviors, how contemptible. Our shop will be the next one smashed to pieces, made into an example for getting the soldier’s hopes up, hopes for promotions and glory. And they’ll probably take him anyway, kill him for an alarm button pressed.  
  
Of course, I didn’t press it. But you _are_ that man. I know your face, I wonder how you could not be recognized by every person on the street- and then I wonder, on the heels of the first wondering, if I’m wrong. You came in once again, today. You’re sitting just there, and I feel no temptation at all to press the alarm.

I spoke to you. You came in and there was no line, and I dared to smile at you. Coffee, black as space and sweet as the abyss. I wonder if you were fooled? I don’t remember everyone’s order, you know. I don’t have that gift of memory for faces and names and coffees, though I wish I did. You pretended it was memory, anyway. You ordered a bagel, laughing over some trite joke about becoming a regular customer. I wasn’t fooled either- you’ll be gone too soon, off dropping bombs and killing cousins and maybe ordering coffee from someone else. I could almost pretend it’s romantic- speeding off, evading the stupid brutish soldiers wherever you go, killing the evil and corrupt for the sake of the much-abused smaller nations. But of course, you were disowned by the general population- only a small faction sent you over to sow terror and panic, to raise our great nation’s forces in preparation of war, but it’s futile, isn’t it? We can’t predict you. You strike unknown, and no matter what forces we raise, no matter how many young men we conscript into the military, no matter how many new bases we make all around the country, we simply cannot stop you from sneaking in and wreaking havoc. You bomb military sites, but you also bomb towns. Civilians have been massacred for the sake of this war. Nobody knows where you’ll hit next, and that’s the point of the terrorism, isn’t it? All our muscle is useless against you and the nation lives in constant fear. And you’re here, smiling and drinking coffee.  
  
If the soldiers come in, what will you do? Will you run? No- of course not, you’re just a civilian. You’ll stay where you are and make no sound, except maybe to turn the page in that newspaper. They’ll take the coffee and I won’t say anything except when spoken to, I’ll stay behind the counter and be sure to get their order exactly right no matter how confusing, and I will never once make eye contact. A terrorist will be sitting right there, not five feet, and I will be facing these soldiers, and I won’t breathe a word or give a single hint. And they won’t pay for anything they get. Our saviors shouldn’t have to waste their pay on such trite things as coffee, and to even hint to them that they should is as good as treason. We should be grateful to them for protecting us. We should be thankful that they kick helpless old men and stomp on business, and might even drive us out of business while they sit impotently in their base, wondering when the next attack will happen. But I can guess better than they- it will be soon, and it will be close. Why else would there be a terrorist with a gorgeous smile five feet from me? Unless, of course, he just wants a cup of coffee.


End file.
